Sign-up Confirmation (Double Opt-in) Feature

What is it?

The sign-up confirmation, often called "double opt-in", ensures your subscribers willingly joined your email list. If you don't use double-opt-in, you're more likely to end up in the spam folder.

When the sign-up confirmation is turned on, all new subscribers will first receive a “confirmation email” from the MailPoet plugin.

Inside this email, there is a link that must be clicked in order to activate the subscription to the newsletter. If they don’t click the link and confirm their subscription, they will remain “ Unconfirmed” and will not receive any newsletters.

Why should you enable this feature?

1. This is the best way to get your subscriber's explicit consent to send them emails;
2. By asking your subscribers to confirm their subscription via email, you avoid sending emails to fake emails entered by evil robots and to invalid email addresses (i.e.: mistyped);
3. Get engaged subscribers that actually open your emails.

This last point is important. You should think about your audience in terms of quality over quantity. The aim is to increase your open rate, not simply increase your subscriber count.

How to resend the confirmation email?

If for any reason the first confirmation email hasn't been sent / delivered to your subscriber, you may want to resend it so they have a chance to confirm their subscription.  We have a guide and additional information about Resending Confirmation emails available here.

Changing the Content of the Confirmation Email

You can change the details of the confirmation email on the Signup Confirmation tab on the Settings page of the MailPoet plugin.

You can just change the Subject and content or select the " Enable visual subscription confirmation emails" checkbox to brand and customize that email.

Over 25% of my subscribers are "Unconfirmed"

Don't sweat it. It's normal to have plenty of unconfirmed subscribers.

If your mailing list is for an older generation of people or for a group of non-computer users, there's a good chance that your unconfirmed rate will be 30% or more. This is normal.

Tip: Make sure your confirmation email's subject is a call-to-action. Read our guide to writing a great subject line.

• A good example: Almost there... activate your subscription! 
• A bad example: We've registered your subscription, thank you.

Sign-up confirmation emails for WooCommerce Customers

All WooCommerce Customers will be automatically added to the WooCommerce Customers list.

If the option “Opt-in on checkout” is checked in  MailPoet > Settings > WooCommerce tab, customers will have the option to opt-in to be subscribed or not, and if they subscribe while sign-up confirmation is enabled, they will receive the confirmation email.

If the option “Opt-in on checkout” is not checked, all WooCommerce customers will be automatically added as “Unsubscribed”.

Sign-up confirmation emails for WordPress Users

WordPress Users are automatically added to the WordPress User list. However, in order to ensure they will receive the confirmation email to be able to confirm their subscription, you need to make sure you have the sign-up confirmation features enabled in the Signup Confirmation tab and the option "Subscribe in registration form" checked in the MailPoet's Settings Basics tab.

MailPoet will then send the confirmation email to all newly WordPress Users added to the list. If the users are added through a third-party plugin that triggers user_register action during import, this also enables WordPress users to receive confirmation emails.

If sign-up confirmation is enabled, but “Subscribe in registration form” is disabled: the user is automatically added as “Unconfirmed” and no confirmation email is sent in order to be GDPR compliant. When synchronizing new users that have an “Unconfirmed” subscription status, confirmation emails won’t be sent to those subscribers.

The only way to change their status is by manually changing it (editing individual subscribers, using an SQL query or re-importing them updating their status to "Subscribed") or by re-sending the confirmation email on an individual basis.

Sending emails without the sign-up confirmation

Using Automations

Although it's not possible to disable Sign-up Confirmation when sending through MailPoet Sending Service, depending on your needs, you can still send emails to contacts that didn't confirm their subscription or not even signed up for your newsletters.

For instance, let's say you have a paid membership plan and you need to send a welcome email to new customers that purchased the membership plan. You can do it with Automations. You would use the Customer Buys a Product trigger and the Send Email action. That type of email is considered transactional so you don't need to have the customer's consent to send emails like this. Hence, they will receive whether they have signed up for your newsletters or not. Just make sure not to use a Delay action as this would make the email be considered a marketing email, which would require subscribers' consent.

The same goes for abandoned cart emails and subscription-related emails. You can read more information about marketing x transactional emails here. 

However, if you want to use full MailPoet capabilities, such as sending newsletters and post notifications, and using all automation triggers available, having your contacts/customers confirm their subscription via double opt-in is required when using the MailPoet Sending Service.

Sending with a different sending method

If you want to use all MailPoet capabilities but don't want to have sign-up confirmation enabled - although it's considered best practice - you can use a different sending method. You can check the available sending methods here.